TFS: Cheap DIY Downdraft Grinding Table

the older I get the more concerned I am with what's been going into my lungs for the past 19 years of my fabrication and welding career but it doesn't have to be that way anymore especially we didn't build something like this for dirt-cheap season five this is a downdraft table sometimes known as a grinding table other times known as a sanding table but pretty much the exact same thing the primary purpose of this is to draw in the air and the particles that leave the piece that you're sanding or grinding on filter it and deliver ten thousand years of fresh air but only if you know the combination to the air shield now a table about this size will set you back somewhere between 1800 and 2500 dollars depending on where you buy it from whose name is slapped across the front of it claimed to be the manufacturer or you know what sort of options it has on it the list goes on but if you lack that king Roland size budget or maybe you don't want to spend that much money on a table or you're just looking for a really cool DIY project for cheap well then you do what I do you set yourself up a budget or a target in this case I want to spend no more than $500 to make this table fully functioning with nothing more than off-the-shelf components from my local hardware store and a little bit of ingenuity you really see me using some pretty fancy tools to get this job done let me reassure you you don't need those fancy tools to do it let's just take the paneling if you don't have let's say a CNC plasma cutter like I do to do this job you can absolutely grab a hold of some power shears double cuts as they call them a jigsaw with a sharp metal blade on there or a pair of tin snips pretty much anything stronger than a pair of scissors is needed to cut sheet metal that is 20 gauge that's the panel size that we're using as far as bending and is concerned if you don't have a boxing pan break capable enough like I do you can absolutely grab like a block of wood bang it over with a hammer you can definitely use some pieces of metal with between two clamps and force it over that way pretty much anything that will make or shape the part that you're looking to build will work all you have to do is come up with something clever and make it all happen remember there's no right or wrong as long as the result is correct the second thing is CAD I have to have CAD in order to tell the Machine what to cut out now you don't necessarily have to have cat at all in fact I was going to make this cool 3d rendering and spin it around and make it come apart to make the video look cool but I ended up getting more frustrating because like many I already had the design inside of my head so I could just get to it I'm starting off with a 24 by 48 inch tabletop that's the sighs in general my table and I got my height set to about 40 inches because I'm relatively tall all of this the steel structure is going to be made out of inch and a half square tubing with an O six five wall this stuff is cheap very easy to work with let's just get right on it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] now you might have noticed that there is quite a bit of a jump in that montage that was just put together there tell you the truth the worst two words in the entire YouTube language dictionary is dead battery so that's why we got a little bit of a jump as to where we're at right now but luckily this is just a steel frame design with the few options in it which we can go over right now the first one is the back catch the back catch is built into the frame itself I've seen a handful of tables out there and they have the catch bolted up to the top of it it's kind of separate of the table but it feels like it takes up well a lot of unnecessary space instead of building a separate catch bolted to the top I integrated it into the table by extending the length of the rear tubes and offsetting the table top for clearance so now the sparks and all a junk will fly off the part and go into the tub thanks to this cheap sheet metal panel that I put on the back here it just deflects it right down into the tub now down below is a section for the drawer the drawer will make cleaning the tub out a bit easier since I won't have to take the slots off the top for regular servicing and cleaning I just pull the drawer out empty it throw it back in now I also added locking caster wheels to only one side the opposite side has some tubes with some foot pads on it why would I only do two wheels instead of four you might ask simple two wheels cost less than four wheels and I only need two wheels to move it in and out of the machine room these legs are from the scrap pile which cost nothing now on the front of this machine which you guys can't see right now is the name and inspiration for this table that I cut out on the fast cut I'll reveal that later but that's why this panel is already on here and kind of blocking it but the big thing you got to pay attention to here this is already painted which means my design has already been made up everything is done and I have no more welding to do after this it's nothing but adding paneling so it's really important that when you get to a stage like this you are definitely sure before you lay down the paint and all the rest of the good stuff so let's get some of these panels together and get moving on there's a couple of things that we have to consider when we're building something like this one of those things is the orientation and the order of which the panels need to go in here that's really important for one primary reason here this is a cheap budget friendly design but I don't want it to look like a cheap budget friendly design I don't want to see thousands of screws all over this thing I definitely don't want screw heads visible on the front or on the sides I mean on the back panel here yeah we're not gonna worry about that but you know I want to look clean I also don't want to reach my hand down into the tank or the tub and get sliced open by a bunch of screws poking through there or whatever so we really got to consider how these panels are going to attach the second thing is serviceability the filters that I'm using are very large they're reusable they're furnace filters but they with the size requirements of flow that I need to have with the two box fans on each side it means that the filter has to be a little bit bigger than what can come out of the top by my design so I'm gonna do a removable lower back panel that will allow access to the tub for cleaning and you know servicing the filters and all the rest of that good stuff no big deal there but the order that I have to put these in here is really important now I am just kind of making this up as I go along just because of the fact that I've redesigned this like three or four times but you know I know that with the order that I'm going to do on here and minimize the amount of screws that I need which also drives our budget down there's gonna be a lot of overlapping in the panels and like one single screw will go in there and hold it all together you'll see all that come together but I have the upper panel for the catch on there I have the front panel on there or at least just kind of in place it's not totally secure but the next panel on my list based on the design that I'm using here is going to be the floor pans then it's going to be the sides with the with the box fans in it then we're going to do the back panel last because that will be the one that's removable and accessible but you're gonna see all that as we go along first measurement that I need to get here is this lower I got sixteen and a half inch was going this way and I've got 21 and a half inches going this way to make sure that all of our panels will overlap and still fit in there we need to make sure that we have enough overlap on this tube but to keep it clean again I want to make sure it doesn't go all the way to the edge here I got an inch and a half to work with so I'm only gonna put like one inch of overlap on this now on this side over here on the opposite side what you'll see later there is that inspirational name for this thing so I can't drive screws in from the front even if I did I don't want to see them so this where attaches of the front panel here will break downward the rest of them will be flat with an overlap a one inch overlap over on the side here where it goes down to the drawer we're also gonna do an overlap just to keep it nice and clean and make sure that no trash or anything gets underneath the sheet metal and all the rest that when will you get all together so with these dimensions in mind we got 21 and a half by 16 and a half and we need to have make sure that we have an inch on each side for overlap super simple let's just knock that out two of them [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] first things that we need to consider here one the total width of it and the total height of it okay so in this case we have 21 and a half inches wide I purposely made it that width so that way the box fan will fit snug nice and neat inside of here which it actually does I'll show you here in a second the height of it we have 27 and a half inches tall that's the total height of it now which way do we want this panel to face and how are we going to fasten it so if you look carefully everything that's on the inside of here is all close to this edge and all of the screws that we intend to drive in here are going to go into these rails now I don't want to access or see the screws from the outside even though this is a side panel you might not see it but at the same time I rather make sure it's nice and flush with the front of it so the face of it will be flush with these rails the inside of it will be where all of the screws will go to fasten this panel on here as well as through the side of the fan because we won't be able to access the break or anything else like that so when we squeeze the fan in here this is exactly where it's gonna sit had the grill which is removable and now it takes the shape the sheet metal of the panel actually takes the shape of the inside of this grill okay so laugh all you want but these are cheap and they're surprisingly quiet now both of these are the width between each one of those tubes it's almost exact to let a little bit of room just for the sheet metal and everything else like that to go in there so my intention here is to basically screw back on this outside piece this fan guard or whatever and this will be the whole panel on the each side and then you'll see just the just this on the reveal should be pretty clean but I gotta take it off of here get some measurements where these screw holes there the radius of everything on here and all the rest of that good stuff which I'll just do really quick on the backside I noticed that when I turn these on originally aside from them being quiet they didn't seem to have a whole lot of power a lot of suction coming out of them so I'm gonna try and increase that a little bit by reducing this general size I'm just gonna stick to this this round section right here it's about nineteen eighteen and a half 19 inches I'm just gonna kind of hole around there so it should draw more in that area and less around the entire fan that's gonna try to maximize that I've also doubled the amount of fans that I'm going to use here by using two of them so one on each side you'll see all that as I go along get all this off of here and uh let's see how everything measures out maybe I feel like I'm getting older here when I say I remember when these things could cut your fingers off long as it works I guess 21 and a half is a total on here we're gonna reduce that size of the opening down to let's just say 20 by 20 that should be that should be the size of the opening I think that's what we'll do there figure out what radius this is right here and then we'll go cut all this out now the full length of this will be the distance that we have in the table full with the bed distance of the table break them both inward a little bit that way we can mount it all screws will actually go through the box fan into the framing itself along with the rest of the paneling that should hide those nice clean reveal on the outside let's get to it [Music] [Music] [Music] okay I can't resist that is just so clean and these fans fit so friggin sturdy I gotta I gotta see this I mean of course they work right there brand-new fans but I thought they'd be a lot louder than that I'm not shouting over this they're not very loud at all there's so cool okay I gotta hurry up and get these other panels on here now this is this is way too cool I wanted all I want to finish this up I got to not get ahead of myself but yeah let's let's get this other panel measured out here I can't wait that's 23 in like an eighth which that's good for clearance by 45 no let's just cut that out and zap that sucker in there I gotta see this this is yeah this is cool you know what hey sorry if I didn't show all of that I'm kind of excited here I really want to see this go together so I mean it's just like any other panel special holy wow look at this this is just clean so now what we're gonna do is take these grills up here cut some new panels and faces for those and then install our filters and filters are important because well I mean it's great that it sucks it all up but if it blows it back up into your face or around the rest of the shop well this is a whole table and setup it's kind of useless so yeah let's get those filters in there and this should be pretty easy to do a little bit tricky maybe but I got an idea let's get this going now our filters are gonna go onto here and I need to reduce this area to provide more suction from these fans out of there right I don't want it to come through all of that area I just want it to be about the size of where the actual fan itself is so we're gonna we're gonna cut a piece of sheet metal to go around here and it's also gonna have our filters slide in through the back of it again I don't want to have any screws or anything seen from the front I don't mind if there's some on the back and I don't really want them on the side either so whatever we do that's gonna go on here is who's going to attach to the fan and then kind of wrap around and completely seal it off so what I need to do is find out the diameter which that's about an inch away from this box fan and since the box fan is 21 and like 1/2 inches wide then we need to subtract an inch from both sides that's the diameter of the fan that we're gonna cut in from the actual from inside there and I'm just gonna make sure comes out to an inch down here away from this side so it's gonna be in the center of that 21 and a half inch cut out there the second thing I did was go out to my break real quick with a piece of scrap metal I bent it all the way as far as you can go maxed out which when you measure one of these out it comes out to 135 degrees all right now this section right here will made up there and seal on nice and tight but instead of trying to sit here and you know eyeball where that angle goes or set this up or anything else like that I'm just you know I just took this piece of sheet metal right here at an inch and a quarter with the worth of a tab on here we're gonna set it up I'm gonna bring it down to the point where it just touches this fan now what this is gonna do when we get this piece all bent up is it's gonna protect these all the electrical and stuff like that and it's also gonna be a drop for all of the junk or anything else like that to go on there just like the back here has that that deflection on the on the back of the catch this I want to deflect downward I don't want any you know junk just sitting on the on there I you know I'd rather just sit on the floor and I could scoop it or you know push it into the end of the drawer down there so what I'm gonna do is take a sharpie at the point right about roughly where it touches or so and I can see from the side where it's gonna wrap around down the metal there you know I can just I mean it's 20 gauge well I kind of missed oh well doesn't really matter I just made a mark where it's gonna go right in front of there if we take a measurement here we're about five and three-quarter inches or so which I could get away with about six ish so 21 and a half plus the inch to go underneath the fan or to wrap underneath the fan or maybe even out like this to give us to the floor to attach to so an inch there that's 22 and a half plus the what six inches or so plus another inch and a quarter that is the total length [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Oh ready time for some filtration this is about where I wanted to go basically centering this above make sure it's like right there centered so it's not too far over this and too far over that the diameter of our fan here or access to our fan want to keep it nice and snug tucked up against there of course when the fans start drawing in they'll know keep it kind of pressed and sucked up in there but the channels or the tracks that I'm gonna build for this I'm gonna have some little tabs that keep them pressed up against the actual part itself and then we'll worry about sealing that off if we need to we'll see what it's like so that looks to be about an inch or so up from there and of course down from there take the tape measure real quick just to double-check yeah that's not an inch they're about an inch there and this is roughly 3/4 of an inch thick or so so we're gonna go one inch up one inch out one inch down to cover the face of it a couple little tabs in there no big deal easy day [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] there's a couple of things we should consider when it comes to the granting service first and foremost it's got to be left bare mental it's a grinding surface so if you made it out of something like steel that was painted or even powder-coated or if you made it out of galvanized the minute and abrasive hit that it could remove it which means it's gonna rest it's now exposed to the atmosphere that leaves us with two metals to choose from aluminum or stainless steel now if you've ever priced out stainless steel you know you're gonna use aluminum the thin of the aluminum is the less money it cost but the offset on that one the thinner it is the less strength it has in this case I wanted to use something that was strong enough to hold the parts that we have on here to grind but not so strong or so thick that I can't even work with it or it exceeds the budget just buying the aluminum itself instead I opted for 16 gauge this is plenty strong enough to hold the majority of the parts that we have on here because it's not like the size of a car that's going on here and the ultimate solution here since we have to have air flow going through it and we have to have holes I decided to punch out the larger holes with dimple dies which strengthens up the panel so with that problem solved on to what's next we're not always going to be in the perfect grinding position for the sparks and dust and everything else like that to collect in either the surface or the back catch what if we're granting this way and the sparks are shooting that way because that's the only place we can be well we need something to stop that that's where the guards come into place they will either deflect it or they'll keep everything basically contained in this area providing that your part fits on the table but therein lies another problem what if your part doesn't fit on this tabletop you got to come up with something that allows it to fit on there so if you've been keeping up with our budget so far you know that we're hitting just over 400 bucks to do this entire table now at a bare minimum everything that we've done so far is all you need but in my eyes I see upgrades let's see what else if we can put on here the first upgrade that came to mind is on that table top or the grinding surface itself now on most tables you'll see a bunch of rubber grommets thought that go into all of these holes and those help keep the part in a steady stationary place basically if you think you can run hands-free grind all you want out of it and it's not gonna slip around now I like the idea and I was originally gonna do that until I priced out a bunch of grommets and found out that 200 and some odd dollars was definitely going to exceed my budget instead I grabbed an anti-fatigue mat this had to be trimmed down to size but the beauty of this is it's way cheaper than ohm rings and as it sits over the grunting surface it keeps the chatter down it mostly absorbs it that's kind of a nice thing there is one part of this build that I am not including into this budget primary reason is because it offers absolutely zero integral role toward the function of this table and I cut it out a scrap-metal so it was free anyway but we encountered a lot of resistance in the beginning of this build especially while we were building it a lot of people said that box fans simply won't function on a downdraft table even though they were working quite well so I became inspired to name my table I needed something that the moment you looked at it you knew exactly what it was gonna do but who could I put on the front of this to make such a point mega made in just in case that isn't enough I enlisted the help of my brother and his babe to show you guys how well this table actually functions when you are in and out of proper positioning or realistic positioning when the table is on [Music] and just for some added fun since I have the room left in my budget I bought a combination keypad and a relay to switch the table on you

Channel: The Fabrication Series

Views: 372,655

Rating: 4.9143748 out of 5

Keywords: downdraft table, grinding able, sanding table, DIY shop equipment, DIY shop tool ideas, grinding ventillation, downdraft grinding table, cheap downdraft table, box fan table, air filter table, cool grinding table, the fabricator series, TFS

Id: q6lKa_P1X2Q

Length: 29min 38sec (1778 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 30 2019